In 1674, the skeletons of two children were discovered under the
staircase leading to the chapel, during the course of renovations
to the White Tower. At that
time, these were believed to have been the remains of the two
princes. On the orders of Charles II the remains were
reburied in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave
was dug up and found to contain both human and animal bones;
however, precise identification of the age and gender was not then
possible.[1]

Contents

Suspects

If the boys were indeed murdered, there are several major
suspects for the crime. The evidence is ambiguous, and has led
people to various conflicting conclusions.

Richard III of England
had eliminated the princes from the succession. However, his hold
on the monarchy was not secure, and the existence of the princes
remained a threat as long as they were alive. They themselves were
ostensibly not a threat, notwithstanding Edward's having been
acclaimed King, but could have been used by Richard's enemies as a
pretext for rebellion. Rumours of their death were being circulated
by Richard's enemies by late 1483, but Richard never attempted to
prove that they were alive by having them seen in public, which
strongly suggests that they were dead by then (or at a minimum, not
under his control—unlikely, since they would presumably still have
been in the Tower). Rather, he remained completely silent on the
matter. At the very least, it would have been in his political
interest to order an investigation into the disappearance of the
princes if they had simply vanished. As the brothers' protector
(having obtained them as 'protectorate' from their mother), he
appears to have failed to 'protect' them. Many modern historians,
including David
Starkey[1], Michael Hicks[2] and Alison Weir[3], regard
him as the most likely culprit. However, Richard III was found not
guilty in a mock trial presided over by three justices of the
United States Supreme Court in 1997. Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist and Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen G.
Breyer, in a 3-0 decision, ruled that the prosecution had not met
the burden of proof that "it was more likely than not" that the
Princes in the Tower had been murdered; that the bones found in
1674 in the Tower were those of the princes; or that Richard III
had ordered or was complicit in their deaths. The Bill of Attainder passed by Parliament, on
orders from Henry VII in 1485, makes no mention whatsoever of the
Princes.

James
Tyrrell was an English knight who fought for the House of York on
many occasions. Tyrrell was arrested by Henry VII's forces in 1501
for supporting yet another Yorkist claimant to the throne. Shortly
before his execution, it is said that Tyrrell admitted, under
torture, to having murdered the princes at the behest of Richard
III.

Henry Stafford, 2nd
Duke of Buckingham was Richard's right-hand man and
sought personal advantage through the new king. Some, notably Paul Murray
Kendall, regard Buckingham as the likeliest suspect: his
execution, after he had rebelled against Richard in October 1483,
might signify that he and the king had fallen out because
Buckingham had taken it on himself for whatever reason to dispose
of Richard's rival claimants; alternatively, he could have been
acting on behalf of Henry Tudor (later to become King
Henry VII). On the other hand, if Buckingham were guilty he could
have been acting on Richard's orders as well, with his rebellion
coming after he became dissatisfied with Richard's treatment of
him. Buckingham was also a descendant of Edward
III through John of Gaunt, 1st
Duke of Lancaster and may have hoped to ascend the throne
himself. Buckingham's guilt depends on the princes having already
been dead by October 1483, as Buckingham was executed the following
month.

Henry VII of England
(Henry Tudor) following his accession, proceeded to find a legal
excuse to execute some of the rival claimants to the throne. He
married the princes' eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, to reinforce his
hold on the throne, but her right to inherit depended on both her
brothers being already dead. Realistically, Henry's only
opportunity to murder the princes would have been after his
accession in 1485. This theory leaves open the question of why the
princes were not seen after 1483 and why Richard did not produce
them when he was suspected of their murder.

Evidence behind the
rumours

The Croyland Chronicle, Dominic
Mancini, and Philippe de Commines all state
that the rumour of the princes' death was current in England by the end of 1483. In
his summary of the events of 1483, Commines says quite
categorically that Richard was responsible for the murder of the
princes, but of course he had been present at the meeting of the
Estates-General of France in
January 1484, when the statement was taken at face value. The other
two sources do not suggest who was responsible. Only Mancini's
account, written in 1483, is truly contemporary, the other two
having been written three and seven years later, respectively. The
Great Chronicle, compiled 30 years later from the
contemporary London municipal records, says the rumour of the
princes' death did not start circulating in London until after
Easter of 1484. Historians have speculated, on the basis of these
contemporary records, that the rumour that the princes had been
murdered was deliberately created to be spread in England as an
excuse for the October 1483 attempt of Henry
Tudor and Buckingham to
seize the throne. If the princes were not already dead by the end
of 1483, this of course removes any possibility that Buckingham,
who was executed on 2 November 1483, could have murdered them.

No discussion of this episode would be complete without mention
of Sir James
Tyrrell, the loyal servant of Richard III who is said to have
confessed to the murder of the princes in 1502. Thomas More, a Tudor
loyalist (and later Chancellor under Henry VIII), composed
his History of King Richard III around the year 1513. He
identified Tyrrell as the murderer, acting on Richard's orders, and
told the story of Tyrrell's confession, which took place after he
had been arrested for treason against Henry VII. The Great
Chronicle of London, written around the year 1512, also
identified Tyrrell.[4]Polydore
Vergil, in his Anglica Historia (circa 1513),
specifies that Tyrrell was the murderer, stating that he "rode
sorrowfully to London" and committed the deed with reluctance, upon
Richard III's orders, and that Richard himself spread the rumors of
the princes' death in the belief that it would discourage
rebellion.[5]

In his history of King Richard, More said that after the princes
were smothered to death in their beds that they were buried "at the
stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of
stones", but that they were later disinterred and buried in a
secret place.[6] In
1674, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a wooden box
containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found at the
foot of a staircase, consistent with More's description of the
original burial place of the princes. They were found with "pieces
of rag and velvet about them", the velvet indicating that the
bodies were those of aristocrats.[7]
Eventually the bones were gathered up and put in an urn, which Charles
II of England ordered interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1933 the bones
were taken out and examined and then replaced in the urn in the
vault under the Abbey. Examination of photographs from this
exhumation indicated that the elder child was 11–13 years old and
the younger was 7–11 years old.[8] No
further scientific examination has been conducted on the bones,
which remain in Westminster Abbey, and DNA analysis has not been
attempted. It is not possible to say the sex of the skeletons. (One
skeleton was larger than the other, but many of the bones were
missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth
from the larger one.)

Arguments in the
controversy

King Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower of London by Paul Delaroche. The theme of innocent
children awaiting an uncertain fate was a popular one amongst
19th-century painters.

Part of the controversy still surrounding Parliament's ruling,
known as the Titulus Regius, that Edward (and
his brother Richard) could not be rightful heirs to the throne
arises from confusion about why Parliament ruled that their
parents' marriage was invalid. The issue was further complicated by
the fact that the Titulus Regius was subsequently overturned by
Henry Tudor's government after the overthrow and death of Richard
III, with the specific injunction that it be destroyed without
being read into the record. As the Titulus also barred Henry's
already tenuous claim to the throne, destroying it provided Henry
with legitimacy, but would have given him a motive to kill the
Princes, newly returned to the succession, ahead of Henry, if they
were still alive in 1485.

As a matter of law, the marriage was, indeed, invalid if the
story of the pre-contract between their father and Lady
Eleanor Butler (née Talbot) was true. Under both canon law and civil
law, a "pre-contract of marriage" was a promise to marry, and
it was enforceable in court as if the promised marriage had, in
fact, taken place (the concept of a "pre-contract" still exists in
law, but it usually arises today in the context of pre-contracting
to make a contract for a business deal, like a sale of property or
a corporate merger). A pre-contract with Eleanor Butler would have
invalidated the king's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. This was the
law in England, and many
other contemporary examples can be pointed to. The purpose of
publishing the "banns of marriage", and then asking
in the wedding ceremony if anyone knows of just cause why the
marriage should not take place, was to prevent marriages that were
invalid, because of a pre-contract or for any other reason.
Marrying in "secret" (or "private", which usually meant "not in a
church") without the calling of the banns, as Edward IV and
Elizabeth Woodville did, was considered a virtual admission that
there was a legal impediment. If Parliament was presented with
evidence of Edward's marriage to Eleanor Butler or his pre-contract
to marry her, it was bound to rule that his marriage to Elizabeth
Woodville was bigamous, and therefore any children born to them
would be considered bastards.

The fact that the princes were technically bastards (following his deposition from the
throne, Edward V was referred to by his uncle's followers as the
"Lord Bastard") did not necessarily mean they could never
inherit—William the Conqueror was neither
the first nor the last bastard to inherit lands and titles.
"Bastardy," the legal term for illegitimacy, was a legal status
that could be changed by fiat, ecclesiastical or civil, as shown by the number
of times King Henry VIII changed the
status of his children. Henry VII's own claim to royal
status was based on the legitimisation of John of Gaunt's
illegitimate Beaufort children. Parliament could have legitimized
the princes and allowed Edward V to remain king, but it used that
excuse for what it wanted to do for practical reasons. Boy kings
(Henry
III, Richard II, Henry
VI) had always been disasters for England—and the Wars of the
Roses had been halted by the accession of Edward IV as a
capable adult. The Yorkists were in power, and Edward V's numerous
Woodville relatives had always been Lancastrians at heart and had
already made many enemies. Richard III, on the other hand, was
considered the Yorkists' best all-round candidate for the job of
king at the time.

There were subsequently a number of apparent Pretenders claiming
to be Prince Richard, although there seem to have been none
claiming to be Edward V. It has been suggested that this is because
Edward V was well known and would have been difficult to
impersonate; this would be equally true of his younger brother. The
best-known Pretender was Perkin Warbeck. The fact that Henry VII
did not provide an official public version of the fate of the
Princes, despite Warbeck's activities, until the Tyrell confession,
has been interpreted as meaning that he was either unaware of the
true story or that publishing it would have not been in his
interests.

The secret was discovered in The Kingmaker, an audio drama based
on Doctor
Who, in which the princes were discovered to be
princesses.

In "I, Richard" from the I, Richard short
story collection by Elizabeth George, the protagonist
murders a friend to obtain a letter they unknowingly possess that
was written by Richard III proving the princes were still alive on
the day of the Battle of
Bosworth. In the same story, George also concludes that Elizabeth of
York murdered the two princes, handing them over to secure her
own place as Queen.

Both Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and Elizabeth Peters' The Murders of
Richard III revolve around the debate on whether Richard III
was guilty of these as well as other crimes.

In 1984, Channel 4 broadcast a four-hour "trial" [9] of
Richard III on the charge of murdering the princes. The presiding
judge was Lord Elwyn-Jones and the barristers were
recruited from the Queen's Counsel, but had to remain anonymous.
Expert witnesses included David Starkey. The jury was composed of
ordinary citizens. The burden of proof was left to the prosecution.
The jury found in favour of the defendant.

The Japanese anime series Kuroshitsuji details a
possible scenario of what happened to the Princes in the Tower in
Episode 16 ("His Butler: The Lone Castle"). Under orders from
'relatives' King Edward V and Richard were executed in Ludlow Castle, and
had their bodies disposed in the River Teme. This revelation allows their
ghostly forms to ascend to heaven after 400 years of haunting the
Tower of London.

In May of 1483 Edward, arriving in London for his coronation, was accommodated in the Tower of London, then a royal residence. Richard at that point was with his mother in sanctuary, but joined his brother in the Tower in June. Both princes were declared illegitimate by an Act of Parliament of 1483 known as Titulus Regius, and their uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester was crowned as Richard III. There are reports of the two princes being seen playing in the Tower grounds shortly after Richard joined his brother, but there are no recorded sightings of either of them after the summer of 1483. Their fate remains disputed, and many historians presume that they either died or were killed in the Tower. There is no record of a funeral.

In 1674, the skeletons of two children were discovered under the staircase leading to the chapel, during the course of renovations to the White Tower. At that time, these were believed to have been the remains of the two princes. On the orders of Charles II the remains were reburied in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave was opened to see if modern science could cast any light on the issues, but precise identification of the age and gender was not then possible.[1]

Contents

Suspects

If the boys were indeed murdered, there are several major suspects for the crime. The evidence is ambiguous, and has led people to various conflicting conclusions.

Richard III had eliminated the princes from the succession. However, his hold on the monarchy was not secure, and the existence of the princes remained a threat as long as they were alive. They themselves were ostensibly not a threat, notwithstanding Edward's having been acclaimed King, but could have been used by Richard's enemies as a pretext for rebellion. Rumours of their death were in circulation by late 1483, but Richard never attempted to prove that they were alive by having them seen in public, which strongly suggests that they were dead by then (or at a minimum, not under his control—unlikely, since they would presumably still have been in the Tower). Instead, he remained completely silent on the matter. At the very least, it would have been in his political interest to order an investigation into the disappearance of the princes if they had simply vanished. As the brothers' protector (having obtained them as 'protectorate' from their mother), he appears to have failed to 'protect' them. Many modern historians, including David Starkey,[2]Michael Hicks[3] and Alison Weir,[4] regard him as the most likely culprit.

James Tyrrell was an English knight who fought for the House of York on many occasions. Tyrrell was arrested by Henry VII's forces in 1501 for supporting another Yorkist claimant to the throne. Shortly before his execution, it is said that Tyrrell admitted, under torture, to having murdered the princes at the behest of Richard III.

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was Richard's right-hand man and sought personal advantage through the new king. Some, notably Paul Murray Kendall, regard Buckingham as the likeliest suspect: his execution, after he had rebelled against Richard in October 1483, might signify that he and the king had fallen out because Buckingham had taken it on himself for whatever reason to dispose of Richard's rival claimants; alternatively, he could have been acting on behalf of Henry Tudor (later to become King Henry VII). On the other hand, if Buckingham were guilty he could equally well have been acting on Richard's orders, with his rebellion coming after he became dissatisfied with Richard's treatment of him. As a descendant of Edward III, through John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Buckingham may have hoped to accede to the throne himself in due course. Buckingham's guilt depends on the princes having already been dead by October 1483, since he was executed the following month.

Henry VII of England (Henry Tudor) following his accession, proceeded to find a legal excuse to execute some of the rival claimants to the throne.[citation needed] He married the princes' eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, to reinforce his hold on the throne, but her right to inherit depended on both her brothers being already dead. Realistically, Henry's only opportunity to murder the princes would have been after his accession in 1485. This theory leaves open the question of why the princes were not seen after 1483 and why Richard did not produce them when he was suspected of their murder.

There were subsequently a number of apparent pretenders claiming to be Prince Richard,[citation needed] although there seem to have been none claiming to be Edward V. It has been suggested that this is because Edward V was well known and would have been difficult to impersonate; this would be less true of his younger brother. The best-known Pretender was Perkin Warbeck. The fact that Henry VII did not provide an official public version of the fate of the Princes, despite Warbeck's activities, until the Tyrell confession, has been interpreted as meaning that he was either unaware of the true story or that publishing it would have not been in his interests.

Evidence behind the rumours

. The theme of innocent children awaiting an uncertain fate was a popular one amongst 19th-century painters.]]
The Croyland Chronicle, Dominic Mancini, and Philippe de Commines all state that the rumour of the princes' death was current in England by the end of 1483. In his summary of the events of 1483, Commines says quite categorically that Richard was responsible for the murder of the princes, but of course Commines had been present at the meeting of the Estates-General of France in January 1484, when the statement was taken at face value. The other two sources do not suggest who was responsible. Only Mancini's account, written in 1483, is truly contemporary, the other two having been written three and seven years later, respectively. The Great Chronicle, compiled 30 years later from the contemporary London municipal records, says the rumour of the princes' death did not start circulating in London until after Easter of 1484. Historians have speculated, on the basis of these contemporary records, that the rumour that the princes had been murdered was deliberately created to be spread in England as an excuse for the October 1483 attempt of Henry Tudor and Buckingham to seize the throne[citation needed]. If the princes were not already dead by the end of 1483, this of course removes any possibility that Buckingham, who was executed on 2 November 1483, could have murdered them.

No discussion of this episode would be complete without mention of Sir James Tyrrell, the loyal servant of Richard III who is said to have confessed to the murder of the princes in 1502. Thomas More, a Tudor loyalist (and later Chancellor under Henry VIII), composed his History of King Richard III around the year 1513. He identified Tyrrell as the murderer, acting on Richard's orders, and told the story of Tyrrell's confession, which took place after he had been arrested for treason against Henry VII. The Great Chronicle of London, written around the year 1512, also identified Tyrrell.[5]Polydore Vergil, in his Anglica Historia (circa 1513), specifies that Tyrrell was the murderer, stating that he "rode sorrowfully to London" and committed the deed with reluctance, upon Richard III's orders, and that Richard himself spread the rumors of the princes' death in the belief that it would discourage rebellion.[6]

In his history of King Richard, More said that the princes were smothered to death in their beds by two agents of Tyrell, Miles Forest and John Dighton, and were then buried "at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones", but were later disinterred and buried in a secret place.[7] Curiously, under the same Henry VIII, a documented Miles Forrest, was granted King's favours as found in British historical documents: "After the Dissolution, the manor of Morborne, with the house and grange of Ogerston in the same parish, lately the property of the Abbey of Crowland, was granted in 1540, with all appurtenances, to Miles Forrest, bailiff of the Abbot of Peterborough at Warmington in 1535.[8]. In 1513, Thomas More names his Miles Forrest as a murderer. In 1534, More fell out of favour with Henry VIII when More denied that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Henry had More beheaded in 1535. In the same year 1535 or 1540 (the above history references both dates), Henry awards the manor to Miles Forrest, the documented bailiff of the Abbot Peterborough.

In 1674, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found at the foot of a staircase, consistent with More's description of the original burial place of the princes. They were found with "pieces of rag and velvet about them", the velvet indicating that the bodies were those of aristocrats.[9] Eventually the bones were gathered up and put in an urn, which Charles II of England ordered interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1933 the bones were taken out and examined and then replaced in the urn in the vault under the Abbey. Examination of photographs from this exhumation indicated that the elder child was 11–13 years old and the younger was 7–11 years old.[10] No further scientific examination has been conducted on the bones, which remain in Westminster Abbey, and DNA analysis has not been attempted. It is not possible to say the sex of the skeletons. (One skeleton was larger than the other, but many of the bones were missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth from the larger one.)

The secret was discovered in The Kingmaker, an audio drama based on Doctor Who, in which the princes were discovered to be princesses.

An episode of the Canadian children's documentary series Mystery Hunters is dedicated to the unsolved case of the missing princes.

In 1984, Channel 4 broadcast a four-hour "trial" [11] of Richard III on the charge of murdering the princes. The presiding judge was Lord Elwyn-Jones and the barristers were recruited from the Queen's Counsel, but had to remain anonymous. Expert witnesses included David Starkey. The jury was composed of ordinary citizens. The burden of proof was left to the prosecution. The jury found in favour of the defendant.

The Japanese anime series Kuroshitsuji details a possible scenario of what happened to the Princes in the Tower in Episode 16 ("His Butler: The Lone Castle"). Under orders from 'relatives' King Edward V and Richard were executed in Ludlow Castle, and had their bodies disposed in the River Teme. This revelation allows their ghostly forms to ascend to heaven after 400 years of haunting the Tower of London.

The Rich Kids had a hit song with, and an album named, "Ghosts of Princes in Towers" which made reference to the Princes and drew on rumors of their haunting the Tower of London.